One Toolkit, One Bleeder, One Bear
by The Shadows of Rozla Kaname
Summary: From the book written by Markus Zusak, "The Book Thief", it retells some of the events from the chapter 'One Toolkit, One Bleeder, One Bear' from the perspective of Frau Holtzapfel.


**The Book Thief – One Toolkit, One Bleeder, One Bear**

**Short Story by Lindie Naudé**

I could feel it in the air before the sirens sang their loud and awful songs. I could feel the breath of death on the doorsteps of my neighbor's houses before the panic began. Still, they wonder why I did not join them in their reckless flutter of terror, calling me a thoughtless old woman. But I don't remember them, don't remember anything except from Michael's hopeless attempts to get a reaction out of me, for me to move, speak, look at him. But I was tired. That's one thing he will never understand, how very tired I was. Or maybe he did understand – either way I'll never know now. I barely noticed as Michael ran over helplessly to Rosa Hubermann's house and knocked until blood dotted his bandage covered mangled hand in a search for aid.

"Holtzapfel!" She waddled towards the doorway. "Holtzapfel, get out here, you miserable old swine!" Without looking at her, I could just imagine the impatience held in her eyes as I sat here wasting her precious time, and yet I couldn't even bring a small smile to my lips. "If you don't come out we're all going to die here on the street!" The old scheisskopf yelled over the wail of the deadly sirens but I paid her no heed. I found it internally amusing that this woman, who called me a swine, took time from her own escape to persuade me to leave my house – oh how the mighty fall.

I couldn't hear much else over the howling of the sirens, unable to make anything out of their non-descript mumblings once I didn't reply, and then before I knew it Liesel Meminger pushed past the squat brute of a woman and stood in front of me, dirty blonde hair suiting the almost aggressively pleading brown eyes that I'm sure she didn't notice she wore. The sirens took a pause, long enough for me to hear Rosa yell out to this little girl who read to me everyday.

"Just leave her, Liesel, we have to go! If she want's to die, that's her business" only for the sirens to come careening back, as if the silence had made their wailing even more intolerable, as if the foreboding it carried was heavier than before.

I could see the cogs turn in Liesel's mind as she tried to bring up any of the multitude of words she knew in hopes of convincing me to leave my comfy seat. The options churned through her head with a look of concentration on her face that was too aware for a young girl to bear, and I sat silently, waiting to hear the futile appeal she would present to me, ready to brush it off before I even heard it. But when she slapped her tiny in comparison hands down on the table and a resolute look of defiance flashed in her eyes, and yelled at me in the once again brief silence of the sirens,

"If you don't come, I'll stop coming to read to you, and that means you've lost your only friend."

Finally I met her gaze, shock and intrigue hidden behind my weary eyes that she would never find behind the still healing wound of losing my forever little boy. There she stood, unyielding and stubborn, just like a child should be, as they demanded what they wanted – and just like an adult, demanding something entirely altruistic. But I stayed silent and she saw it in me before I did, my surrender to death, and ran from the house without looking back. The only one who dared look back was Michael as his child like hand slowly detached from the gate it clung onto doggedly, a funny sight when paired with its new fragility and weakness. But then survival got the better of him and when Rosa called for him he dragged himself away from my presence and I saw that he was still human, where I was not.

They left me to the silence of my thoughts as the ever-screeching sirens finally ended their call of demise among the people of Molching and I contemplated the last words Liesel had said to me, and wondered if I would let them be the last words that I ever heard. I thought of the pity that would be assured to me if they were, the thought that I would loose the only friend I had – and a child at that – to either the inability to move or the lack of motivation to do so; which either one it was, I'm still not quite sure.

So when I peeled myself slowly off of the kitchen chair and slowly made my way through Himmel Street, which would soon become anything but a picture of heaven, I came up with the decision, that even though my drive to live was cut short at best, I would not die without having a friend in the world and a mad son driven by his humane instincts to survive first physically, and emotionally second. The door opened without hesitance as I requested entry to the basement made bomb shelter and when I stumbled upon the scene of Michael sobbing loudly, bloody and half insane I knew why. I did not look at the others who looked upon me with pity, and I could almost hear their thoughts as they shook their heads.

_Poor woman,_

_Sad woman,_

_Unlucky woman_.

Michael looked up at me with pleading eyes that held heartbreaking guilt that I could hardly bear to see in him, let alone fathom how it would have felt to hold it myself.

"Mamma, I'm sorry, I should have stayed with you," he wept, and I knew that he spoke to me only half of his words, and the other about his brother – my dear Robert – and I wondered if he would be able to handle such remorse for the unfortunate events that took place there and now. I ignored his sobs and bent down, lifted his bandaged hand and spoke in a soft voice a mother uses with a newborn,

"You're bleeding again."

That night the bombs were loud, and the children silent as we all tried to imagine a place and time where we could and were happy, and I imagined Michael, without shame and guilt, and Robert, alive and mine. And I sat their amongst the children and adults, and saw how Liesel was both, and saw how Michael was both as well, and I sat there, holding my child until the dawn finally broke and the bombs ceased and the tears finally stopped.


End file.
